Using Win 7 Home Edition. Action Center is reporting that a backup is in progress even though I have set backup to "not scheduled". Task Manager reports 95% CPU usage at all times. I can kill some of the processes but still cannot get below 60%. As you can imagine, my computer response is very slow.

I have read elsewhere that it is not possible to turn off Windows backup.

Type in Services in the Start menu search box and press enter. Find Windows Backup and disable. Then check Task Manager to see what difference that makes. This is only to observe the impact disabling the Win Backup service makes. It is not a permanent solution.

Deadeye81

"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give." Sir Winston Churchill

Type in Services in the Start menu search box and press enter. Find Windows Backup and disable. Then check Task Manager to see what difference that makes. This is only to observe the impact disabling the Win Backup service makes. It is not a permanent solution.

Lee, do you see any indication in Task Manager that a backup is in progress? If so, try connecting whatever device you normally use as the backup destination to see if the backup will finish. Were all previous backups finished successfully with writing to either DVDs or an external USB hard drive?

You disabled the Windows Backup service, rebooted, and Action Center still reports Backup in progress?

Try disabling the Volume Shadow Copy service as well as the Windows Backup Service, reboot, and see if Action Center still reports backup in progress? Make sure both services are set to disabled, not just stopped. If they are stopped, they will restart when you reboot.

If none of these help, then reboot and start tapping F8 until you see the Advanced Boot Options screen and choose Repair your computer. This will take you to the System Recovery Options page. Select System Restore, and choose a restore point you know predates the Action Center backup in progress notice. See Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows article on this for more details.

Microsoft seems convinced that a third party program or a corrupt system file is causing the Action Center to persist in the backup in progress message, and there might be some registry damage. Once you do a System Restore, it would be a good idea to open a command prompt by clicking the Start orb and typing cmd in the search box, then right click cmd to select Run as administrator. Type sfc /scannow at the command prompt and press Enter . Be sure to include the space following 'sfc' and '/'. This will check your system files for integrity and replace any that are corrupt or missing. You may or may not be prompted to insert a Windows 7 installation DVD.

You can selectively disable any third party (non-Microsoft) startup programs by typing msconfig in the Start menu search box,pressing Enter, and clicking the startup tab. You can also click the Services tab and check the box Hide all Microsoft services and selectively disable the other services one at a time to see if doing so has any impact on the situation. This is admittedly a time consuming task. For that reason I would tackle this as a last resort before doing a repair install.

Deadeye81

"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give." Sir Winston Churchill

Lee, to go to the Services plug in, click the Start orb and type Services into the search box and press Enter. The Task Manager is not the place to disable services. Locate the Volume Shadow Service and the Windows Backup service. Right click on each one and select Properties. Where it says Automatic or Manual, change it to Disabled. After disabling, click to Stop each of the two services.

Next reboot the computer and check Task Manager to see what is running excessively after a few minutes. It will take a few minutes for everything to settle down after the reboot. Are there still multiple instances of cmd.exe running in processes after a few minutes following reboot?

Deadeye81

"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give." Sir Winston Churchill

"Lee, to go to the Services plug in, click the Start orb and type Services into the search box and press Enter. The Task Manager is not the place to disable services. Locate the Volume Shadow Service and the Windows Backup service. Right click on each one and select Properties. Where it says Automatic or Manual, change it to Disabled. After disabling, click to Stop each of the two services.

Next reboot the computer and check Task Manager to see what is running excessively after a few minutes. It will take a few minutes for everything to settle down after the reboot. Are there still multiple instances of cmd.exe running in processes after a few minutes following reboot?"

I disabled each of these services and rebooted. That got rid of the Action Center about backup in progress but I still have 2 instances of cmd.exe and CPU usage near 100%: